Hostgator Elite Dedicated (150-200 concurrent users)

[servermin]

Hi, I've had all kinds of issues with a site I'm hosting for someone. Here is a link (http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=261209&page=1) to the server optimization George, over at the forum suggested.

I was told it could handle my 150-200 users at peak times, but it just isn't. People are getting Server Too Busy errors. My server loads usually average around 5 when it is active. 1 when there aren't many. Today it went into the 30s and crashed the php.

I have xcache enabled, and all the optimized recommendations done, I think, but still having no luck. I PM'd on here as well. I know some of you probably run bigger boards than this, on here, with hostgator and wondered what you were doing. They suggested tonight getting two dedicated servers. One for caching queries and another to run the forum?

Open to any help/suggestions. Thanks! The site is for a celebrity that a lot of teenage girls are flocking too, so it is busy. zefron.com/forum. I've been at this for a couple months now trying to fix this for the person running the site :(.

Server has:
Dual Xexon 2.4
4096 RAM
2x80gb SATA
2,500gb Bandwidth

[Deriel]

Something is wrong, for sure. My forum is bigger - not much, but bigger - and we use only one server, a Pentium D with 2 GB RAM for 300-350 users and almost never the server load go higher from 1.

In my case the killer optimization was Sphinx. Server load decreased, no more table corruption... do you use Sphinx?

Do not go for another server, not yet.

[snakes1100]

That server should handle far many users than that at one time, from the looks of your post over at vb.com, did you ever setup xcache right?

You was also right, there was numerous posting about xcache & php, it was actually a memory leakage issue though for certain distros. Im running 5.2.6, but then again i run gentoo on numerous servers i administrate.

You going to have to get dirty and start with enabling logging in mysql for slow & non indexed queries, turn on debug as well in apache and see what it spits out in the log.

Make sure you have xcache setup right.

Make sure your not running out of ram and swapping

Make sure you have apache setup right to serve the visitors and not bloat it with to many start servers, min, max etc, i also note george told you to turn on keepalive, i would disagree with him on that for large sites, it would be better to keep it off or turn down the timeout to 1, 2 at the most. I'd also upgrade apache to 2.2.8 and get rid of 1.3.xx

I would also dump off searching to MySQL and take it out of vb's hands.

Without looking at the server live, there is not much any of us can do but make suggestions to you.

[servermin]

Today, the person helping me at host said,
"Xcache is currently disabled and eAccelerator is being used as an alternative. Please let us know if you continue to see any issues."

They also took off mysql limits and changed the wait timeout to 3600 seconds. They also upgraded to 5.2.5 on the php and upgraded to apache 2. We'll see if we have any more issues.

Should I have them put xcache back on. Also, where do I post to hire someone to look into it?

Right this second I have 140 users. Server load is around 7. No more database errors with the timeouts, though, so we'll see. No complaints of server too busy yet, just want to get server load down, as well.

The only other thing running is php coppermine gallery. Seems like that will put some load on the server, but it spikes when forum is used, not the gallery.

[snakes1100]

xcache is preferred over apc and out performs.

with a 3600 timeout, you wont get emails thats for sure lol

with the amount of users you have online in the forums, i dont see why you would be caring that large of a server load, there is something else going on, but logs will help you in finding that out, you might also want to start a strace on large cpu or ram pids and find out what they are doing to use up so much resources.

[alphadeity]

I would gladly have a look at the server for you free of charge. PM me if you're insterested.

[Marco van Herwaarden]

Just a general friendly warning: Do not give out server access details to someone unless you are 100% sure they can be trusted.

[alphadeity]

I don't need your access details. I would galdly tell you what to type in the server console and just paste back the output on your screen.

[servermin]

I've hired someone to work on it and it is running tons better. Had some major issues. Thread can be closed. Thanks!